Monday, July 27, 2015

From True Dignity Vermont

Around one in five patients who choose euthanasia in the Netherlands acts under pressure from family members, according to a leading expert on the ethics of assisted dying, as reported last week in Dutch News: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/07/pressure-on-patients-is-cause-for-concern-euthanasia-expert/According to the report, Professor Theo Boer, who teaches ethics at
Groningen’s Protestant Theological University and has for nine years served as a
member of one of five review committees that assess every euthanasia case, said,
“Sometimes it’s the family who go to the doctor. Other times it’s the patient
saying they don’t want their family to suffer. And you hear anecdotally of
families saying: ‘Mum, there’s always euthanasia.’”

Here in Vermont, where physician-assisted suicide has been legal for just two
years, cases of pressure are already starting to emerge, and it isn’t always
family members providing the pressure. True Dignity has spoken with the family
of a 90-year-old Medicaid patient who felt pressured by caregivers in the
facility where she was admitted for recovery from a fall. The patient did not
have a terminal diagnosis.

According to Beth Neill, clinicians at the Berlin Health and Rehab Center
informed her mother at regular intervals during her 4-month stay there that she
had a “right” to use Act 39, and that, “She didn’t even have to discuss it with
her family.” It was the act of repeatedly bringing up Act 39 as a health care
“option” that caused her mother to feel pressure, and not overt efforts by
clinicians to convince her to request the lethal prescription, Neill said.
However, she said her mother made it clear she wanted nothing to do with Act 39
and was disturbed that staff re-introduced the topic repeatedly.

AN effort to legalize “assisted suicide” in California has been put on hold.
The rationales that caused California lawmakers to rethink the proposal deserve
attention elsewhere.

This is especially true of arguments put forth by Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a
psychiatrist who is director of the Program in Medical Ethics at the University
of California Irvine. Proponents of assisted suicide portray it as a humane
solution for people in the last stages of painful, debilitating, terminal
illnesses. But in a letter sent to California lawmakers, Kheriaty demonstrated
that such laws can lead to death for a far wider, and often healthier,
population.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Assemblyman Roger Hernandez was recently quoted as concerned that big business would use California's assisted suicide proposal, SB 128, to "guide people in that direction," meaning early death via a lethal overdose.

This is a valid concern.

I am an attorney in Washington State where assisted suicide is legal. Our law is based on a similar law in Oregon. Both laws are similar to SB 128, which seeks to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia in California.

If assisted suicide is legalized in [your state], your government health plan could follow a similar pattern. Private health plans could also follow this pattern. If so, these plans would pay for you and/or your family to die, but not to live. (Emphasis added).

Id, ¶16.

Dr. Stevens also notes that the mere presence of legal assisted suicide steers people to suicide, which was the case with his patient Jeanette Hall. Her cancer treatment was fully covered, but with the existence of Oregon's law, she nonetheless became adamant that she would kill herself. Dr. Stevens convinced her to be treated instead. (Affidavit, ¶¶ 5-9). She is alive today, fifteen years later.

As for Assemblyman Hernandez's specific "big business concern," in 2013, a Montana State Senator made a similar observation:

I found myself wondering, Where does all the lobby money come from? If it really is about a few terminally ill people who might seek help ending their suffering, why was more money spent on promoting assisted suicide than any other issue in Montana?

Could it be that convincing an ill person to end their life early will help health insurance companies save a bundle on what would have been ongoing medical treatment? How much would the government gain if it stopped paying social security, Medicare, or Medicaid a few months early? [it could actually be years earlier]. How much financial relief would pension systems see? Why was the proposed law to legalize assisted suicide [SB 220] written so loosely? Would vulnerable old people be encouraged to end their life unnecessarily early by those seeking financial gain?

Finally, there is the expansion issue. In Washington State, we have had informal "trial balloon" proposals to expand our law to non-terminal people. For me, the most disturbing one was in the Seattle Times, which is our largest paper. A column suggested euthanasia as a solution for people without funds in their old age, which could be any of us, say if the company pension plan went broke.**

Assemblyman Hernandez is right to be concerned about what could happen to his constituents if SB 128 is passed.

* Margaret Dore is a former Law Clerk to the Washington State Supreme Court and the Washington State Court of Appeals. She is a former Chair of the Elder Law Section of the ABA Family Law Committee. She also worked for a year with the United States Department of Justice. She is president of Choice is an Illusion, a nonprofit corporation opposed to assisted suicide and euthanasia. To learn more, see www.margaretdore.com and www.choiceillusion.org

** Jerry Large, "Planning for old age at a premium," The Seattle Times, March 8, 2012 ("After Monday's column, . . . a few [readers] suggested that if you couldn't save enough money to see you through your old age, you shouldn't expect society to bail you out. At least a couple mentioned euthanasia as a solution.") (Emphasis added).https://choiceisanillusion.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/jerry-large_001.pdf